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Family Planning and Rural Fertility Decline in Iran: A Study in Program Evaluation
Abstract
The objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact of Iran’s family planning program on rural fertility outcomes. The lessons from Iran’s program are considered valuable but we do not know what they are because there are a number of other simultaneous changes in health and education that are well-known correlates of fertility decline. During the first few years of the Islamic Revolution Iranian fertility was on the rise, in part because of the revolutionary government's pro-natal policies. In a policy reversal, in 1989 the government launched an ambitious and innovative family planning program specifically aimed at rural families. By 2005, the program had covered more than 90 percent of the rural population and the average number of births per rural woman had declined to near replacement level from about 8 birth in the mid 1980s. In this paper we ask to what extent this decline was the result of the family planning program. To identify the impact of the family program on fertility, we use the timing of establishment of Health Houses and fertility decline for a smaple of about 14,000 villages. Our results indicate only a moderate effect of the program on rural fertility. Fertility decline in villages that received health services earlier was only slightly greater than those that received it later. Our regression results indicate that other factors, such as initial literacy and availability of schools may have played a larger role in fertility decline than family planning.
Discipline
Economics
Geographic Area
Iran
Sub Area
Iranian Studies